My apologies for being late today; doctor's appt for the wifey.
The Chicago Tribune's Mary Schmich wrote a terrific piece on abortion morality, reflecting back decades to an experience in a California church:
I've always remembered that brochure because it did, in fact, clarify my thinking, with one complex simple sentence: "Sometimes there are tragic conflicts of life with life."
A lot of us who support legal abortion understand abortion as precisely that: a tragic conflict of life with life. In other words, a moral issue.
But to listen to the media lately, you'd think we abortion-rights supporters, or at least the Democrats, had just discovered that "abortion" and "moral" were related.
More prizes below the fold...
The Washington Post's
David Ignatius interviews Iyad Allawi, who, under numerous death threats and repeated assassination attempts, may flee Iraq if the new Shiite dominated government cannot provide adequate security. Allawi is concerned that the new government will not resist a "wave of revenge and retribution."
Allawi's gift, in a land of conniving politicians, is that he is straightforward.
He has been saying precisely the same thing about how to build a new Iraq ever since we first talked in 1991, when the idea of overthrowing Hussein seemed a fantasy.
He has always argued that a stable Iraq could only be built on the foundations of the secular state that has been emerging since the 1920s -- including its army and civil service. He was making that same argument this week, just as passionately.
On the other hand, Robert Kagan, also of WaPo, writes of anti-Shiite paranoia in the circles criticizing Bush's Iraq policies:
One could note, for instance, what Iraqi Shiite leaders have actually been saying since their election victory, which is that they have no interest in or intention of copying the Iranian model or in making Iraq an ally of Iran. Adel Abdul Mahdi, a top Shiite leader, told CNN exactly that.
He also insisted, "We don't want either a Shiite government or an Islamic government." Abdul Aziz Hakim, the leader of the Shiite alliance that won 48 percent of the vote, has pledged a "government of national unity," and already it is clear that bargaining among Iraq's constituencies is likely to produce a government with strong Kurdish as well as Sunni participation.
The NY Times' Bob Herbert takes Bush to task for hypocrisy on Syria while facilitating "extraordinary rendition" of a Canadian citizen from JFK airport flown by executive jet, and turned over to Syria, who prompted tortured him:
From the U.S. perspective, Syria is led by a gangster regime that has, among other things, sponsored terrorism, aided the insurgency in Iraq and engaged in torture.
So here's the question. If Syria is such a bad actor - and it is - why would the Bush administration seize a Canadian citizen at Kennedy Airport in New York, put him on an executive jet, fly him in shackles to the Middle East and then hand him over to the Syrians, who promptly tortured him?
The administration is trying to have it both ways in its so-called war on terror. It claims to be fighting for freedom, democracy and the rule of law, and it condemns barbaric behavior whenever it is committed by someone else.
At the same time, it is engaged in its own barbaric behavior, while going out of its way to keep that behavior concealed from the American public and the world at large.
Paul Krugman goes after Alan Greenspan for endorsing Bush's plans to privatize Social Security, even though he agreed with critics that those plans do nothing to resolve the underlying financial problems of Social Security, and incur dangerously high levels of more debt.
And though he's not the first to do so, Krugman draws a parallel between the three-card-monte technique behind the Bush regime's propaganda for the Iraq War, and their current deceptions on Social Security privatization plans.
Speeches about Iraq invariably included references to 9/11, leading much of the public to believe that invading Iraq somehow meant taking the war to the terrorists.
When pressed, war supporters would admit they lacked evidence of any significant links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, let alone any Iraqi role in 9/11 - yet in their next sentence it would be 9/11 and Saddam, together again.
Similarly, calls for privatization invariably begin with ominous warnings about Social Security's financial future. When pressed, administration officials admit that private accounts would do nothing to improve that financial future. Yet in the next sentence, they once again link privatization to the problem posed by an aging population.
And so it was with Mr. Greenspan. He painted a dark (and seriously exaggerated) picture of the demographic problem, and said that what we need is a "fully funded" system. He then conceded that Bush-style privatization would do nothing to improve the system's funding.
Syndicated columnist Marianne Means writes that the time is right for Hillary Rodham Clinton to go for it:
Maybe we are ready now for the next step up. Seriously ready. Other countries have chosen female prime ministers or presidents and survived just fine. And in Clinton, we have one of the most celebrated political figures of our time.
A CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll last week found that 40 percent of the Democrats polled said they would be most likely to support
Clinton for president, 25 percent said they favored Sen. John Kerry and 18 percent said former Sen. John Edwards. Only 17 percent had no opinion or picked "someone else." (If former Vice President Al Gore is really interested in running, as rumored, he's got a great deal of footwork to do.)
And on HRC's prospects for a general election:
A Fox News poll that month showed Clinton beating Frist 40 percent to 33 percent; beating New York Gov. George Pataki 41 percent to 35 percent and Gov. Bush 46 percent to 35 percent.
Fox News also asked if those polled thought Clinton is qualified to be president; 59 percent said she is, clearing a major credibility hurdle that has handicapped past women in public life.
Finally, for those patient enough to plod through to the end...just a good editorial cartoon, from By Mike Smith, Las Vegas Sun, for USA TODAY:
Have a great weekend.